Telling it like it is.......

In the early hours of yesterday morning I wrote briefly about the dark place I was in. Afterwards I felt much better. This is because I wrote it how it was and in that writing I acknowledged it for how it was. I didn't write a long and complicated explanation or description for why I found myself there, I was just there, the why or how wasn't important. I walked through the park to work and the familiar presence of the leaves and the trees gave the usual calm. I was where I was, it wasn't right or wrong, good or bad, it's just where I was. It was this acceptance without doing anything to change it which resulted in the stillness I felt which then turned to transformation. The result was that I arrived at work upbeat and happy.

I had a performance appraisal with my boss which I had been dreading because I have felt in recent weeks that my work has been slipping. To my amazement I was able to come up with a couple of ideas for pushing some areas of my work forward which surprised me and delighted her. Now I have to deliver...... Afterwards I wondered where the confidence had come from...it certainly wasn't there yesterday. But then again mystics have constantly said that there is no past, there is no future, there is only NOW, this moment, what is NOW. My NOW yesterday was dark and I wrote that. I didn't look to the past or the future to explain or describe why I was feeling that way. I didn't hide by taking a spiritual sentence and explaining that. I told it how it was and in that honesty something shifted profoundly for me and for how I was around others at work. This is what the journey is about shifts in my own quality of life that benefit others, not shifts in my life for me alone. Shifts have no power if they don't transform the quality of my life and also the quality of life around me and ultimately the quality of life itself.

In a few minutes I am going to collect my friend and drive her to the airport. She is going to visit her family in Thailand for 4 weeks. For today why not take on being honest and telling people exactly how it is.....not how we would like it to be....or why it's not like it should be. I have discovered that this 'wanting things to be a certain way before I can be happy' is strong in me but there's nothing wrong in this as long as there is the awareness that this is a trait of mine which doesn't always serve me.......